The National Assn. of REALTORS® reports that it has launched a new blog to replace the traditional web format of it Center for REALTOR® Technology (CRT) quarterly newsletter. Mark Lesswig, vice-president of NAR CRT says:
"We believe that blogs hold tremendous potential for real estate—both as a marketing tool for brokerages and as a faster way to share product breakthroughs. By using blogs to communicate with our fellow real estate professionals, we make it easier to get information on new tools out to you. We’ll also help build industry familiarity with this powerful new communications option."
The newsletter is published in WordPress format. It looks like a blog, it is well written and beautifully designed. Great tools and links, valuable information, but contact with the authors is e-mail only. There are no provisions for comments or permalinks, and there are no categories or other familiar "blog markers". It is a non-interactive blog. Too bad about that.
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CORRECTION: Last week I looked at the existing web site and missed a major point that was published in the newsletter: "We will be moving the tech edition to a blog. Blogs are a new form of communication that we believe can better convey information, allows your feedback and can be used to improve the real estate tech community." I was under the mistaken impression that the newsletter w as the blog. Here is the actual blog. The blog is highly interactive and well written Both the newsletter and the blog are MUST reading. I apologize for the error.
Hi Fran,
I have posted a comment on the NAR blog at http://blog.realtors.org/crt/ . It does seem to be interactive afterall. Check it out.
Posted by: Carol K. Williams | August 12, 2005 at 08:41 PM
Fran,
I applaud NAR and Mark Lesswig at NAR for launching the Center for Realtor Technology new blog, and look forward to being a regular reader. My experience is that CRT is an extraordinarily open, forward thinking team who do the industry, both agents and real estate consumers, a GREAT SERVICE!!! So I am not suprised that that their new blog does allow comments, as Carol Williams's post earlier today demonstrates.
There is one major thing that I do take issue with, but that has to do with what consumers want to read, NOT with what CRT is doing.
Count me in the CRT fan club, and KUDOs to the NAR leadership for having the vision to let CRT embrace and test new technologies that service real estate agents and consumers alike!
Bill Wendel
617-661-4046
Posted by: RealEstateCafe | August 12, 2005 at 10:56 PM